Somatic Experiencing

Somatic Experiencing is a body centred therapy developed by Dr Peter Levine for the healing of episodic or developmental trauma and chronic stress.

His work is based on decades of research into the effects of trauma on animals and human beings. It is now the most widespread form of body-based (psycho)therapy in the world, due to its unparalleled efficiency in helping people come out of trauma-based symptoms and long-term suffering.

What he noticed in his research was that after a traumatic event, animals naturally discharged the energy in their bodies through gentle shaking and trembling. If they failed to do this, they would be much more vulnerable to future threat or even die of shock. As humans we have the same inbuilt biological responses to threat and stress but instead, we tend to over-ride or repress it to avoid feeling out of control and uncomfortable. However, the survival energies of these undigested events can become written into our neurobiology, manifesting in physical symptoms and unhelpful beliefs and behaviours.

It is also important to define what trauma is. For many of us trauma is assumed to be limited to big catastrophic events however, simply put, trauma can be anything that was too much, too soon, too fast, or too little (such as childhood neglect), for us to process and make sense of at the time. What this means is that whilst some traumatic events might involve a threat to life, any event or chronic stress (including developmental) that leaves our nervous system feeling overwhelmed, can be deeply traumatising. The extent to which a person experiences trauma is directly related to their ability to restore a sense of safety and ease in the aftermath of the threatening event. If they’re unable to effectively do that, their nervous system gets stuck in the survival states of fight, flight, or freeze. These survival states are only useful for acute states of threat. When an individual gets stuck in a trauma reaction because they cannot restore their sense of safety, the individual will continually sense danger when danger is not present, or completely shut down and lose capacity to live in the present.

The classic forms of talking therapy are limited in working with traumatic symptoms since they do not address the critical role of the body in healing or disregard the idea that trauma in not only a mental/ emotional experience. It is important to understand that trauma is not in the stressful event, but in how the nervous system is affected by the event and how this continues to negatively affect a person’s life, even decades later. Our bodies hold memories and imprints of our past experiences. The trauma at the root of our anxiety, depression, and maladaptive behaviours can’t be resolved without our body finding a way to release these memories and imprints. Sustained healing only happens when our nervous system regains equilibrium. SE helps us move beyond the cognitive process of understanding our trauma. It’s a process that reprograms the body’s primitive survival instincts, allowing one to feel a greater sense of connection, safety, and ease in one’s body.

A safe life is a good life.

Let’s think of our brains always acting in two ways: “survival brain” or “safe brain.” In a safe brain state, we are open to learning new information and can see the big picture of a situation. We feel calm, peaceful, curious, and unafraid of making mistakes.

When the survival brain is turned on, we are hyper-focused, we feel a sense of threat and cannot tolerate ambiguity. Fear dominates our decision-making skills, and we often lose our sense of competence. The longer survival brain stays on, the harder it is to turn it off.

Safe brain is expansive and life feels vital and joyful. Survival brain creates misperception, ambiguity, and threat. The better we can manage our stress reaction, the easier we can keep out of survival brain. This takes time and effort and requires that we develop a tolerance of uncomfortable sensation in the body. If we are unable to tolerate the uncomfortable sensations, we try to numb them or distract ourselves from them with maladaptive behaviours. By growing our ability to tolerate discomfort, we gain the capacity to move through our challenges and the knowledge that we can safely come through the other side of a difficult experience. SE includes talking, but the talking is used to track body sensation and meaning attached to experiences, rather than bring the individual back into the event of the trauma. When we bring the body into the therapy process and facilitate a way for the individual to physically move through the experience with a sense of safety, the relationship to the experience changes and the stuck energy will discharge.

Unlike most therapy modalities which are considered “top down,” meaning they use our highest form of cognition, SE begins with a “bottom up” approach of sensorimotor processing aimed at guiding the client through the most primitive to the most complex brain systems. The practitioner begins by guiding the client to track sensation and movements, helping a patient develop a felt sense of his internal states of tension, relaxation and respiration cycles. This is a powerful mechanism to regulate the autonomic nervous system. Cultivating the awareness of these sensations is the foundation of healing the psychological effects of trauma because it allows us to tolerate and complete the physiological impulses that are trapped in the body.

For example: if a patient is experiencing intense sensation or tension in their neck, the therapist may ask the patient to observe the tension but also pay attention to other parts of the body that feel more neutral. Through this process, the patient learns to tolerate the experience and begins to develop a sense of being in charge of their physiology. The patient gains confidence and the capacity to feel sensation and emotions without a sense of overwhelm. As SE therapists our aim is not for the client to relive the trauma but rather to process it in a slow and safe way, we are able to do this by tracking physiology and getting to know the client’s unique nervous system and its window of tolerance, and if overwhelm takes over too much we bring them back to a sense of safety.